Alien Dragon's Mate: Braxan (Science Fiction Alien/BBW Romance) (15 page)

The insanity of it all made him suddenly laugh out loud. He was dying. And he was
afraid
. He, an Ultraco! What an end to Prince Braxan! Flame, he was glad his flight wasn't here to see him. It would be the most ignoble end any Ultraco had ever met.

He sat down by the root of a tree, stiffly and gingerly, and leaned back against the trunk. “Enjoy my hoard, Dacron,” he whispered. It would probably befall his second in command. The other two would fight him for it. But they would probably lose. Dacron was both sly and strong. And old. And Braxan's hoard was immense.

Even the thought of his hoard didn't light up his mind. The thought was cold. It didn't matter. It was unimportant.

Indifferent to his hoard? He shook his head in disbelief, but it made him see stars, so he just leaned his head back against the hard trunk of the tree.

Huh. He could see the bare rock of the crater just a hundred yards away. This was the edge of the jungle. They had outrun the Pirgks. They had escaped them. If she had been here, they would have been close to the end of their journey together.

That meant that they would also have been close to the inevitable moment when she learned who he was. Now he would never know how she would take it, exactly how much she would resent him for what he was and what he had done.

He could handle dying. Ultracos were close to immortal, but nothing in the universe could be truly deathless. Oblivion didn't scare him. What he could not handle was her being in danger. Or worse.

His strength was pouring out of him with every breath. It would soon be too late. Every other thought faded except the image of her face and the sweet sound of her voice as he remembered it.

The panic filled his being. She could be in danger somewhere in this very jungle! He would help her. He was the only hope she had.

He had to find her.

Mobilizing all his willpower, he raised his head first. Then he put one hand on the trunk of the tree and forced his legs to obey him in lifting him back up to a standing position.

No, that was too soon. He just had to get up on his knees first.

Almost there. Just a little break to catch his breath.

And now place one foot in front of the other, kneeling on one knee.

Like
that
.

And now just to let go of the trunk with both hands and get up to a standing position ...

- A
melia -

She found him on the ground by a tree, and the breath stuck in her chest. She ran over and kneeled down, placing a hand on his back.

His skin was still warm. Too warm. But he was unconscious and his breath was so slow and shallow that she feared for his life.

She opened the medpack with dirty fingers that were trembling and got out a patch of a strong stimulant. That was only supposed to be used in dire emergencies to briefly revive someone. But if Braxan stayed like this, Amelia couldn't move him. If he were to receive real medical care at the base, he would have to walk there himself.

She dried off his hard bicep with a swab that was soaked in alcohol and placed the patch on the skin, away from the hard scales.

She kept a hand on his back while it started working and looked towards to crater that could be seen in the distance. That was where she'd climb up, and then she'd try to avoid the Pirgks for long enough to make it to the  base. Hopefully with Braxan, too. But she didn't have that many stimulant patches.

She got out her comms unit. It hadn't been thirty hours yet, but the one thing she had forgotten to ask last time was becoming pretty urgent. She glanced up at the sky, shielding her eyes. Two suns, none of them orange. It would drain the battery fast, but she needed answers now.

Braxan was breathing slower and deeper now, probably more asleep than unconscious. Soon he'd be awake.

This time, it was Daria.
“Ohmigod, I'm so glad you're still- you know, out there!”
she said.
“I can't believe they'd kidnap you that close to the base! Oh, and hi, I guess.”

Hearing her friend's chirpy voice felt like a refreshing shower to Amelia, even if it was badly distorted by the interference from the suns. “Hi. Yeah, still going. Things are a lot better now. And some things are worse. I don't have much time. The comms is using a lot of power right now. Can you please ask Carl what it means when the nanogel in a medpack is applied to a wound and it turns blue?”

“Okay. Stand by.”
Daria could be businesslike and effective when she wanted to be, and Amelia could hear the urgency in her own voice.

Braxan moaned. She placed a hand on his cheek. “You awake?”

He didn't reply, just moved his hands a little.

“Back again,”
Daria said against a background of bad static.
“The doc is online. He asks if the color of the gel is light blue, sky blue or dark blue.”

“It's like a baby blue. So light blue, I guess.”

The line was silent for a while.

“The doc asks if it is you who are wounded.”
Daria was talking slowly, enunciating each word very carefully.

“No, it's someone else.”

There was a brief silence again.
“Okay. He says to keep your distance to that person and to ideally not touch. But I guess that's too late.”

“Why? What does it mean?”

“Seems all the blues are bad. Light blue is means there's uranium in there. It's toxic and radioactive. It's one of the things they used in atomic bombs in the old days.”

“Uranium? How the heck ... okay, thanks. I'm down to ten percent battery. How are things at the base?”

“Yeah ... they're not great, Amelia. No dragons have attacked us so far, but we can see them in the distance. Just circling. And there are Pirgks all around us now. We're almost out of ammo. Everyone is barricaded in the fortified domes.”

Shit. That was bad. Daria didn't say it, but it was clear that the base wouldn't survive another attack.

“Copy that. Just one more thing. When I get there, everyone should be ready to evacuate the base and climb out of the crater by the shortest route. To the south-east. I think we have an escape route now. Amelia out.”

She didn't wait for a reply. The comms unit was scorching hot in her hand as it did its best to punch through the strong solar interference with an understandable signal. She placed it back in her pocket and turned to Braxan. He was awake and had turned around on the ground so he was looking at her. And it looked like he was smiling.

“There you are,” he said, and Amelia was astounded that even in his obviously weakened state, he sounded relieved and even happy.

“There I am,” she confirmed. “What happened to you? Did you hit your head or something?”

He slowly got up into a sitting position. “I must have. But now we're together again. That's all I wanted.”

She looked him over. He was so pale his skin looked almost translucent. The wound was pale and gray. As if the flesh was dead or dying. She was no expert, but uranium didn't sound like something anyone would want anywhere near them. “You look terrible. How do you feel? Think you can walk for a few hours more?”

He laboriously got to his feet, then stood there swaying, scanning their surroundings. “Yes. I see no Pirgks around. But they will be inside the crater. We will defeat them there.”

She had an urge to embrace him. Even this worn out, he was so sure of coming out on top that it almost convinced her, too. Even if she knew breaking through the masses of Pirgks around the base would be pretty near impossible.

She dug into her jacket pocket. The crashed spaceship Marqatzo had reached the conclusion that there were many plants in the jungle that were edible to humans, but he had recommended the berries that Braxan had already discovered. They had been a favorite of the Byt because of their flavor and their modest lifting effect on the mood. The ship had directed her to a bush, and she had picked as many as she could fit into her pockets.

Braxan took two and chewed them slowly. “Thanks. From the position of the suns, we must get going now to reach the top of the crater rim in the dark.”

Amelia nodded. “Sure you're ready to go? You don't look so good.”

He slowly turned his head to look at her. Now his face wasn't pale, but reddish, and his eyes were glazed. It looked like he wasn't quite focusing on her. “The berries will sustain me.”

He started walking towards the crater that they could see beyond the trees. He walked slower than before, and once in a while he steadied himself on a tree trunk. Amelia followed. They moved slowly. But at least they were moving.

There were no Pirgks around when they reached the edge of the jungle. Now that Amelia knew what she was looking for, the sharp outline of Marqatzo's buried hull was pretty obvious as an edge that ran along the treeline. The air was much cooler here, too, as if the jungle held on to all its heat.

She took Braxan's hand. It felt hot, feverish. “You need a break?”

He kept going, and slowly focused on her. “No breaks. If I stop I can't be sure I'll be able to get going again.”

Going down the rocky slope had been hard enough. Going up was a murderous struggle. Whichever huge meteorite had impacted the planet's surface thousands of years ago and thrown off this gigantic mass of rocks, sand and loose gravel must have been the size of a city. The masses were not compacted by rain or wandering animals or any other process, so they were as loose as the day the meteor had hit. With each step they took, they slid a half step back down. Sometimes they would release avalanches of rocks and sand, and they both fell many times when their foothold gave way under them.

On Earth, craters like this would be overgrown with all kinds of plants, and sometimes they were so worn down by rain and wind and the forces of nature that a crater the size of the Gulf of Mexico could sometimes hardly be seen. The planet Belzon must have been pretty much sterile before Marqatzo had crashed there with his cargo.

Amelia kept feeding Braxan the berries. She sensed that they were all that was giving him the energy to keep going. She had asked Marqatzo for medical supplies or food, but he had nothing left in his mind-bogglingly huge cargo holds. The Byt survivors had lived off his stores for centuries, and they had cleaned out every scrap long before the Pirgks arrived and finished them off.

Braxan was stumbling with almost every step he took now. He was feverish, and even in the cool air his torso was covered in a layer of sweat.

His breath was rapid and ragged, and she could hear a rasp in his throat. But he kept up with her, and she had to admire him. Most people would have given up. He didn't. He would keep going or die trying. It was the most male thing she had ever witnessed. Making money or killing people or doing sports – that was what most men rated highly. But this, going on far beyond exhaustion and illness and just keeping going no matter what, that was power. She loved him for it. And for a million other things.

He stumbled one more time, and then he no longer walked, but crawled on both his hands and his feet, unable to straighten up or keep his balance. His whole body was trembling with the effort of just moving a foot forward at a time.

She suddenly realized that he wasn't going to make it. She was out of berries, too. And the medpack didn't have any more stimulant patches.

“Braxan,” she said and felt her throat tighten. “Is there anything I can do to make this easier for you?”

“You have ... done ... so much,” he panted. “I only regret ... that I can't ... make it easier for
you
.”

Bitter tears burned in her eyes, and she placed one hand on his shoulder. His skin was slick with sweat and boiling hot to the touch. “Why are you doing this? You've done nothing but help me since I met you. I don't think that wound of yours can be treated, even at the base. And I think you've known that all along.”

He kept going, as fast as he could. “I did ... suspect that. My purpose ... is to ... help you as much as I can.” He laboriously lifted an arm and pointed to the ridge above them. “Soon ... we'll be up. And then ... the Pirgks might see us. I will ... protect you ... then.”

Amelia just nodded. Braxan was obviously not in any shape to protect anyone at all.

But he was right – they would soon be up on the crater's edge. And he wasn't stopping. His progress was slow, and he was wheezing with every little inch he climbed, but he was making progress.

The two suns had set, and the short Belzonian night when all three suns were down was upon them. It was the best time for trying to sneak into the base. The Pirgks were not nocturnal, and as far as anyone knew, they couldn't see in the dark any better than humans could.

Even so, Amelia made sure to lie down on her stomach before she inched up the edge. She might still present a clear silhouette against the starry sky, seen from the floor of the crater.

She inched forward on the gravel, and more and more of the bottom of the crater became visible to her.

And there was Belzon Base! Not at all as far away as she had feared. She could probably walk there in under an hour. And the Pirgks ...

Her heart sank in her chest. Even in the darkness, it looked like the bottom of the crater was moving with a life of its own. She had seen anthills look less busy than that. A great number of Pirgks had come, and the mass of repulsive aliens got thicker close to Belzon Base, like a rock concert seen from above.

“I think that is going to be pretty hard,” she whispered.

Braxan crawled up to her, slowly, then looked out. “It is. We're down to ... our last ... option.”

“Yeah? And what is that?”

He didn't reply, just rolled over on the ground and stared towards the sky. Amelia got worried and put her hand on his chest, checking his pulse. No, still alive. But probably in some kind of feverish coma.

She had no idea what to do. The medpack was empty of things that could help.

Then he cleared his voice. “What happens now might surprise you. I have kept a secret from you, and I do regret that. But I think you'll agree that I had some reason to.”